


The Draw

by eruriotica (minxiebutt)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Aromantic, Asexuality, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 04:36:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9802856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minxiebutt/pseuds/eruriotica
Summary: Sometimes, finding a soulmate does not light a fire in one’s blood, but rather, the opposite, cooling the pain of long separation.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, Frauke! I’m sorry that I’m late for Valentine’s Day, but I hope you enjoy this little thing. Your list gave me so much to work with, and the idea of aro/ace soulmates gave me the warmth fuzzies, so that is what I’ve gone with. I hope you have a wonderful belated Valentine’s!

  
  
  


It's there, that whirling twirling stirring of restlessness nestling deeply, soundly, steadfastly in his bones in a way that he can neither deny nor express, driving him toward too often, too intense sessions of introspection, meaning to discover and employ a way to soothe said restlessness once and for all, to no avail. 

 

The charm of his hometown dulls predictably with age, and his parents say it's part of growing up, that he is too large for their humble nest; that the cure for his late night paces and frets is to spread his wings, find his own flight,  _ fly-- _ figuratively speaking. 

 

The gleaming glamour of Manhattan is all he's ever known, but Erwin Smith, at the age of eighteen years, freshly graduated from high school, two-time student body president and most recent prom king, is inexplicably homesick for stetsons and cowboy boots and longhorns to kill a man, so after trading the prestigious supply of Ivy League for equally proud Texas A&M, he departs for the southern state. 

 

;;;

 

It's been his dream since childhood, to be like his father and follow those too-large footsteps, so he studies as hard as he can and applies with all the hope he can muster; however, there is no happy acceptance in the letter in his hand, not from the school he wants, off in New York, his father’s alma mater and the school that would have guaranteed a smoothly successful career. 

 

“I'm sorry, pumpkin,” his Ma says, catching him in a half hug, holding the second, less exciting, more predictable and expected letter from Texas A&M, his back-up school, who will gladly take him on scholarship. 

 

“It's alright, Ma,” Levi Ackerman says, content façade, as his heart swells in disappointment and that old aching in his bones flares and makes him want to curl up and cry. He can't, though. It hurts him but he knows this is better, this scholarship keeps the burden of cost off his mother, and he’ll keep living at home, not yet leaving her alone in the too-empty house with all her thoughts and sorrow and family photos. 

 

It hurts him, it makes him long for the bustling nightlife of New York City, something tugging at his sternum, fit to open him up should he pull against it. It aches sharply for a few weeks after his graduation, and then one night, amidst a heavy downpour that leaves his city in a flash flood watch, it spreads out warm and heavy and makes him sleep soundly. 

 

;;;

 

Erwin’s first night in College Station, Texas, it rains so hard that he thinks he might be washed away, but he makes it to his new apartment safely and when he eventually settles under the freshly-made sheets of his new bed, he finds that for the first time he can recall, that stirring in his bones has muted to a gentle throb, as if there is another heartbeat inside of him. 

 

;;;

 

The muted gentle throb is content to accompany Erwin in relative peace until classes begin in the autumn, after which the throb becomes a fierce piercing in his chest, and he wonders if he should visit the clinic to be evaluated for heart attack risks. 

 

;;;

 

Levi takes a position pushing paper at the university clinic, a small building on the corner of campus that doesn't seem to be anyone’s interest this close to the beginning of the semester, so he mostly sits and plays with his phone on the clock. He's behind the receptionist’s desk, out of sight from the waiting room, heavily invested in a round of online poker, when the aching comes stumbling into the forefront of his mind like a drunkard, demanding attention and demanding it  _ now. _

 

“Sorry,” someone says, a yankee accent, “Uh. Do you have information on, uh, heart attacks, please?”

 

Levi can't explain it, barely registers his own actions, but he pushes to his feet, letting the cable wire around his rib cage lead him out into the waiting area, where suddenly the air is static. 

 

The yankee has a hand in his own chest, rubbing, but he stills when Levi, drunken on the aching in his bones, giddiness permeating his bloodstream with delirious warmth, stumbles into his line of sight and there, on Levi’s lips, without the slightest of indicators: “Erwin.”

 

“Levi.” 

 

;;;

 

They stay up all night but not with inappropriate activities, instead with trading stories and dates to find comfort in their mutual experiences, and that it's not so insane after all, that all this time, their tugging and aching has been for the other one. 

 

;;;

 

Two days in and Levi knows that his Ma can see the difference in him, and he knows that she purposefully doesn't speak of it, that she wants to avoid pushing her own life choices on him, because not everyone gets married in college, it he wants to badly to take her in his arms and squeeze her tight, proclaiming that he has found the one for him. 

 

The first weekend after meeting Erwin, Levi packs an overnight bag and lets Ma know that he is staying with friends. She smiles, unquestioning, supporting his newfound social growth. 

 

;;;

 

Despite the current social trend of using movies to excuse for sexual activity, Levi binges a whole season of Erwin’s favourite show with him in one night, going through twelve forty-minute episodes without so much as a wayward stroke or shy kiss. They are, however, entwined like lovers; Erwin, on his back, his legs spread open on the long couch, Levi settling snugly between his thighs; Levi, chest to chest with Erwin, has his arms around the other’s torso, his hands immobilised where they spread over shoulder blades and sinew and strength. 

 

“Am I heavy?” Levi asks during an episode’s intro music. 

 

Erwin grunts a soft decline. 

 

“Of course not,” Levi says, acting tough to distract from the blush creeping up his neck. “Why would I be? You lift weights like a maniac.”

 

As if Levi is not the same way, as if they are not nearly one in the same, of the same feather, a flock of two. 

 

;;;

 

Erwin invites Levi to Manhattan for Thanksgiving, and even though he wants to agree so badly, to board the plane alongside Erwin, to meet his parents and his litter of little sisters, Levi must turn him down. 

 

“Ma shouldn't be alone for Thanksgiving,” Levi says, with all the weighted responsibility of a boy who wants to be the man his father wouldn't want him to be. 

 

“I understand,” Erwin says, and it's true. 

 

“I wouldn't want any of our parents to get the wrong idea about us.” They don't fuck, don't even kiss. They're together, easy companionship like cookie cutters, but not intimate, and surprisingly to Levi, neither of them are bothered. There are no heated, lustful glances, no air charged with sexual tension begging to be explored and satisfied. 

 

It's unspoken between them, this knowledge that they will be together forever, that they were made for one another, but they're young still, and youth draws skeptical, unsolicited criticism.

 

;;;

 

Hardly a month later, Erwin spends the whole of the Christmas holidays with Levi and Mrs. Ackerman. 

 

;;;

 

Erwin doesn't kiss Levi until after college graduation. It's not a  _ goodbye, _ but a  _ see you soon, _ because Erwin is going home to break some important news to his parents. Levi is there at the airport to pick Erwin up a few weeks later, his sternum on fire, a degree for every mile that has separated them, and he surprises himself by seeking a kiss, one chaste press of lips to lips that Erwin gives willingly. 

 

It turns out that Mr. and Mrs. Smith were more accepting of their son being with another man than the notion that a healthy, young adult male could possibly be uninterested in sexual activity. Erwin is quiet about the trip for a few days before he opens up and tells Levi about the peculiar exchange, but afterward, they find a good giggle in it, that everything somehow must come back to sex, as if the only reason to live and breathe and find a soulmate is to  _ fuck,  _ to degrade hard-won commitment to a crude, biological urge. 

 

;;;

 

Eventually, they decide to get married, more on the pragmatic side of  _ why not? _ than for a romantic reason. Instead of even the smallest of ceremonies, instead of even informing their families, Levi manages to coax Erwin down to City Hall on a quiet Tuesday morning, where they don’t even exchange rings before the Justice, opting to simply recite cardboard vows, because everything that needs to be said is already there in their bones. 

 

Afterward, like an inside joke of a modest celebration, they buy hotdogs from the vendor in the park and discuss their next steps together as one.

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> trying my hand at this style, please let me know how it feels! comments and kudos deeply appreciated~!


End file.
